Either the person who bought the policy wants to sell or the insurer who wrote the policy wants to sell. The person selling wants cash today, and the person buy

Either the person who bought the policy wants to sell or the insurer who wrote the policy wants to sell. The person selling wants cash today, and the person buying wants cash tomorrow. Same as anything else. EDIT: I will add, there is a lot of this kind of thing going on in insurance now because no-one expected rates to stay this low for so long. This drives cash out of insurers who, often, have a massive stream of liabilities and no way to generate cash to pay them. And this specific market is driven more by individuals who took out huge life insurance policies, lived longer than they expected, and are now stuck paying huge premiums they can't afford (so they sell the policy to someone else, who pays the premiums, and collects the final value). Again, this is basically how financial markets work. Risk is shifted towards those who are most able to bear it. The alternative here is a bunch of old people having to declare bankruptcy and being stripped of all their assets because there is no-one who will cash their policy.